Career Focus
Product and brand management are at the heart of many organizations'
survival. Brand and product managers "run" a small
business and, as such, have profit and loss responsibility
for brands. Yet few courses in the curriculum are intended
to walk students through the steps necessary to achieve
this objective. Accordingly, the goal of this course is
to prepare such managers to build brand assets and create
an enduring advantage for their brands in the marketplace.
The focus of the course will be highly applied with many
cases and guest speakers that emphasize the actual management
of products and brands.
Brand management has traditionally been associated with
consumer products and services markets, though there is
increasing interest in branding by firms who operate in
industrial markets. The brand manager's key focus is developing
and building the brand itself, which may extend across multiple
product lines or categories.
Product management is typically used to describe a wide
range of activities centered around a product or product
line. Product management is often the preferred organizational
approach in high technology and industrial markets, and
in consumer products companies who favor a product category
focus.
Finally, the course exposes students to the contemporary
challenges faced by a broad variety of firms in creating
and maintaining brand equity. The settings of the cases
and exercises used in the course are quite diverse in terms
of the sizes of the organizations involved and the types
of markets they serve. Hence, the course is relevant to
students whose interests are in general management and consulting
as well as those who expect to work directly in brand or
product management.
Objectives
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
Thus, you will have acquired skills that will help you
to manage your products and brands to achieve a sustainable
competitive advantage, command greater price premiums, and
efficiently allocate your marketing resources.
